when home won’t let you stay

The exhibition is
curated by Isin Önol

On the 3500-kilometer journey from a now
deserted home in Aleppo to Vienna, a Syrian refugee has to witness and endure the state of humanity and humaneness in our
time. By trying to perceive the world through the eyes of someone who sets off to seek refuge, an unmasking prospect unfolds
- of devastating human experiences, of a catastrophe emerging from an endless chain of atrocities and neglect; but also of
support and empathy. The exhibition “when home won’t let you stay” focuses on these astonishingly varied shades of humanity
and examines the notion of humaneness in the early 21st century. It interrogates what it means to be human today, in contrast
to the ideals of humaneness and human rights. The exhibition asks about the possibilities of socio-economical and political
developments towards a conscious co-existence; not only so as a temporary solution to this immediate catastrophe – the so-called
refugee crisis – but also as a confrontation with our individual and communal approaches to being human.

Borrowing
its title from a line of the poem Home by Warsan Shire, the exhibition attempts to elucidate the journeys of the displaced
between their lost homes and the new ones that will have to be built.